Beauty and the Mustache (15 page)

“
I don’t?”

“
No, you
don’t. Since your friends left, I think I’ve heard you say three
words that weren’t spoken to Momma or to one of the
nurses
about
Momma.”

He was right. When Momma
was awake, we talked, I fed her, I bathed and dressed her, or I
read to her. Every day, however, she continued to dispense random
bits of perplexing wisdom.

When Momma was asleep,
Marissa tried to draw me into conversation.

But mostly I slept, made
mental lists regarding Momma’s eating and sleeping habits, or I
read. If I remembered, I ate.

Until this moment, my brothers had let me
be.

But I sensed that they
were waiting for me to step up and demonstrate strength of
character and leadership. I didn’t want to, and I honestly felt
like I couldn’t. I wasn’t a leader—but I wasn’t a follower
either.

I’d reverted to my
childhood default; in Tennessee, I was an overly sensitive
loner.

Now, as the truth of
Billy’s words sank in, my gaze dropped to the floor and I shifted
my weight. I saw that my feet were bare and a little dirty. Then I
noticed that I was in yoga pants. I wondered when I’d last changed
my underwear.

Gross.

“
This is it,” Billy said.
“This is your come-to-Jesus moment, care of your big brother.
You’re going to go upstairs,” he pointed up the stairs. “You’re
going to take a shower, because you stink. Then you’re going to put
on clean clothes and come back down here. I have an errand for you
to run, and you’re not allowed to come back to the house until
supper.”

I stared at him, opened my mouth to object,
but realized I had no idea what time it was. “Wait, what time is
it?”

“
It’s almost
noon.”

“
Why are you home?
Shouldn’t you be at work?”

“
I came home during lunch
because I was worried about you.”

I flinched, startled.
Billy was worried about me. One side of my marshmallow wall melted
into goo.

“
Get on upstairs or I will
strip you naked and force you under that shower myself. No need to
knock; nobody is on the schedule for today.”

I nodded, my chin wobbling, my eyes filling
with tears.

“
And stop being so
pitiful.” He said this harshly, right before he pulled me into a
hug-and-hold.

***

I was shoved
out of the house, but only after Billy supervised
me doing my hair and putting on my makeup. He also picked out my
clothes.

He justified all of this
overbearing behavior by saying, “We are all worried about
you.”

For some reason, this
worked. I was discovering that my brothers’ concern for me was my
kryptonite. Maybe I’d run away from them and Tennessee eight years
ago out of an instinctual need for self-preservation and a desire
to become someone else. They—as a group or individually—could
effortlessly wrap me around their index, ring, or pinky
finger.

Or maybe I was just
feeling markedly overwhelmed, tired, and hungry, and was currently
in a state of high suggestibility. Getting dressed, putting on
makeup, and doing my hair all felt like going through the motions.
I lacked the energy to care.

Whichever the case—dressed
in jeans that were now a little baggy, a Mumford and Sons concert
T-shirt, and converse sneakers—I was sent on my way. I was soon on
the road to the backwoods ranger station; my mission was to give
Jethro his provisions backpack.

I mostly knew where I was
going. The twists and turns of the mountain road, along with the
energy and focus required to navigate them, proved a great
distraction. I was almost disappointed when I pulled into the
makeshift parking lot for the small outpost cabin.

Billy had explained that
this particular ranger station was a one-room cabin set on a hill.
You parked at the base of the hill then walked a tenth of a mile
(up the hill) to the cabin.

It was a beautiful day,
and I briefly wondered what month it was. I decided, counting back
two weeks, that it must be the middle of September. The air was
still August hot and the ground was slippery from a morning
rainstorm. I had to navigate the incline slowly, paying special
attention to avoid the particularly muddy areas.

Halfway up the hill I felt
the ground tremble in the same way it does when a galloping horse
approaches. I stopped and surveyed the clearing.

Then I heard it.

Something was crashing
through the forest. And it was large enough to make the earth
vibrate. Before I could tell my feet to run, I saw it.

It was a black bear—quite
possibly the largest black bear in the Great Smoky Mountains
National Forest—and it was running right for me.

I gasped, horrified, even as I quickly
calculated my chances of reaching the ranger station before the
bear reached me. Those chances were a big, fat zero.

I did the only thing I could think of and
what all children growing up at the edge of the wilderness are
instructed to do if cornered by a bear in the woods.

I fell to the ground and played dead.

The muddy, wet ground
seeped through my jeans and T-shirt. I tried to breathe and lay
limp, but I couldn’t. I held my breath, my body taut with the
anticipation of becoming a bear snack.

As a rule, black bears
don’t eat people; not even the big, four hundred pound male bears
like this one. They’re typically shy and only venture out at dawn
and dusk. Usually they’re hanging out in trees, taking naps, and
munching on berries.

So it made no sense for this creature to be
running out of the forest at 2:00 p.m. on a Tuesday. He was plowing
toward me like I was the last ripe berry bush of the season or a
basket of fish.

I felt him thundering
toward me as I played dead.

As I played
dead….

What are you
doing?!
Some part of me demanded.
Get up get up get up get up!

I opened my eyes, stared at
the ground. A little voice that was growing louder with each ground
tremble commanded that I face the end of my story rather than hide
from it and
play dead.
Hadn’t I done that enough? How much of my life was going to be
about escape?

In a flash I remembered an
article I’d read about a hiker who scared off a grizzly bear by
standing tall and holding his jacket over his head; in essence it
made him appear just as big as the grizzly.

Obviously driven insane by
the pathetic notion of dying while playing dead, I jumped to my
feet, grabbed the bottom of my shirt, and pulled it up and over my
head as I faced the bear. It was close now; I could hear the
labored breathing of the beast. I forced myself to open my eyes,
and did so just in time to see it veer slightly off its original
course. I tensed as it galloped less than two feet from where I
stood like a mental patient with my shirt over my head.

That’s right. The bear ran
past me like I wasn’t even there.

La-di-da, if you please.

And it kept on running,
all the way to the other side of the clearing and into the
wilderness beyond. I strained my ears, still holding my breath, and
listened to the sounds of it crashing through the forest as the
reverberations beneath my feet receded.

I twisted and looked over
my shoulder, staring at the spot where it had disappeared into the
woods.

“
Oh my God!” I shrieked,
looking to the left and right, followed by a startled,
disbelieving, very hysterical laugh. “Oh my God, I just did that.”
My legs gave way and I fell down, my bare back—save for the scrap
of my bra strap—hitting the muddy ground with full force, and I
breathed in the smell of the earth.

I didn’t care that I was
caked in dirt and mud and grass stains. Nor did I care that my hair
was damp and my body was sweatacular and sticky from
adrenaline.

I was just happy to be
alive with all of my appendages in place and not a scratch on
me.

Then, I heard another
noise, and I froze. It was a snarl. In comparison to the thunderous
bear, it was a subtle sound. But the snarl caused a new wave of
cold fear to twist in my stomach before crawling up my spine,
because I recognized what the sound meant.

Slowly, I sat up and
realized that the bear wasn’t running
toward
anything. The bear was
running
away
from
the rabid raccoon currently eyeing me with madness.

I screamed and jumped to my feet just as the
tiny raccoon, its mouth foaming, sprinted out of the forest and
into the clearing.

“
Raccoon! Rabid raccoon!!”
I yelled, running uphill to the ranger station.
“RACCOON!!!”

The moment was both
terrifying and preposterous. I hadn’t run from the
four-hundred-pound black bear, but I was running from a rabid,
smaller-than-average raccoon.

I hollered, “COOOOON!!!” but then grimaced,
the hyper-civilized part of my brain shaking its head in severe
judgment for using that word in any context.

I found I was gripping
Jethro’s backpack of provisions in one hand and my shirt in the
other; so I ripped open the bag and started throwing anything I
could find at the rodent—my shirt, Jethro’s thermos, water filter,
a bag of walnuts, underwear—all the while screaming,
“RACCOON!!”

The little devil would not
be deterred. It just kept coming and snarling and foaming. I
tripped on something and fell, my arms bracing against stones, my
teeth banging together with a jarring click, causing me to
accidentally bite my tongue.

The iron taste of blood filled my mouth as
my hands searched for something, anything to hold off the raccoon.
I found a rock and threw it at the varmint, then another, and
another.

In desperation, I screamed,
“HELP ME! BEAR! BEAR!!”—deciding that the word
bear
would break through to anyone
within earshot in a way that
raccoon
might not.

I clipped the little beast
with heavy stone, confusing the animal for a few precious seconds,
and launched to my feet. My hands were scraped; my arms scratched,
bruised, and muddy; my jeans soaked through, but I launched myself
up the rest of the hill, sprinting until I was sure my chest would
explode.

When I was thirty feet
from the cabin, I glanced over my shoulder and found the raccoon a
mere five feet away. Reacting on instinct, I roared, turned,
planted my left foot on the ground, and administered a swift goalie
kick to the small raccoon in a way that would have made my high
school soccer coach proud.

The raccoon sailed thirty
or so feet down the hill then rolled another few feet. Apparently,
it didn’t require much recovery time, because it immediately
started back up the hill in mad pursuit.

I heard the door to the
ranger station open behind me. I turned and began sprinting to the
safety of the cabin, paying no heed to Drew’s bewildered and
stunned expression.

“
Ash? What
the…?”

Without explaining or
thinking, I reached for Drew’s gun, withdrew it, flicked off the
safety, turned, aimed, and shot the raccoon.

I’d like to say that it
only took one shot, but that would be a lie. I emptied the entire
magazine and pressed the trigger several more times after all the
bullets were spent. Some of the shots missed, some
didn’t.

Take-home
message:

Rabid Raccoon:
zero.

Ashley Winston: still
alive and rabies free.

I stood, gun in hand,
breathing hard, staring at the ground in the distance for an
indeterminate period. Adrenaline waned, my heart slowed, and my
body began to shake.

“
Ash…?”

The sound of Drew saying
my name startled me, and I jumped. Before I could make any other
movements, his arm wrapped around my middle, strong and solid, and
brought my back against his chest. His free hand reached for the
gun. Gently, he took it, holstered it, and shuffled us
backward.

I noted that he kicked the
door closed with his booted foot and moved us farther into the
cabin. Unexpectedly, my knees failed me and I sagged. Also
unexpectedly, Drew swung me into his arms and carried me to a faded
red and white checked couch. Even more unexpectedly, instead of
placing me on the couch, he sat and cradled me on his
lap.

I didn’t cry. I wasn’t
going to cry. After a long time of sitting on Drew’s lap, I became
aware that he was stroking my now wild hair and rubbing my
mud-crusted, jean-clad thigh. I realized that I’d just faced a
black bear with my eyes open and my arms stretched over my head. I
replayed the rabid raccoon near-attack over and over in my mind,
starting with the snarl and ending with eight gunshots.

Reality finally soaked in. I was wet,
shirtless, scraped, bruised, muddied, and cold. But I was
alive.

I stirred. Drew’s
movements stilled. I shifted. He leaned his head away and peered
down at me, his bright gray eyes wide and searching.

“
Hi, Drew,” I said. The
tremors had passed, and I wasn’t shaking anymore, but my voice was
weaker than I would have liked.